Friday, 29 April 2016

Everyone is
talking about the weather. It continues bitter and bleak and bolshie. It is
almost May, and humans and horses are rugged up as it if is deep mid-winter.
The sky is the colour of shattered dreams and everyone I meet sighs rueful, resigned
sighs. We must bugger on, but, like an old mare out at pasture, we long for the
sun on our backs.

The Beloved
Cousin calls, and, in my heart, the sun comes out.

I wonder
about the power of friendship. Does it mean more now because I am deep in the
woods of the middle of life? Is there something about heading towards fifty
that makes a human cherish the kindness, laughter, wisdom and general
loveliness of someone known for thirty years? Do I feel a passionate gratitude
for those staunch friends because I know now how rare a gift they are? Or is it
that the accumulation of memories, happy and sad, comical and tragic, build up
into a soaring cathedral of wonder? Perhaps it is all those things.

We make
plans. We love the plans and grow as excited about them as if we were girls.
She tells me a funny and naughty story which begins with the thrilling words: ‘You
must never repeat this.’ (We have kept many, many secrets over the years.) We
range over some mutual friends. So and So gave a party; Such and Such has an
enchanting new girlfriend.

We discuss
the Euro-argument and the anti-Semitism row in the Labour party. We
contemplate, rather gravely, whether the slow-down in China is going to capsize
the world economy.

We fall into
an antic, delighted, passionate gallop through Pride and Prejudice. We both
love Jane Austen like a sister, and I am re-reading Pride and Prejudice for the
second time in six months. ‘It’s like having your best friends to stay,’ I say,
laughing. ‘I love spending time in their company. It’s like having you to stay.
I breathe a huge sigh of relief and pleasure.’ We delve deep into the psyche of
Mr Darcy. It’s not just pride, we decide, it’s that he is a classic introvert.
We run through two or three of our favourite scenes. Some of them we can repeat
word for word. ‘We are such geeks,’ she says, gusting with laughter.

Then, just
for fun, we have a quick canter through Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights and the
Sword of Honour Trilogy.

She tells me
something perfectly adorable which The Smallest Cousin has said, and I am so
shaken with hilarity that I can’t speak, but just gasp with laughter down the
telephone.

We run
through a thorny problem I had not long ago which has turned out to lead to
something much, much better than I could have hoped. ‘It’s so funny,’ we say, ‘how
those things which you think are disasters so often end up being the best thing
that could have happened.’ We are old ladies, and we have learnt a lot of life
lessons, most of them the hard way.

Imagine
that, all in one conversation.

As always,
she leaves me better than she found me. She lights up the day, so I don’t care
any more about the horrid weather. She has the amazing talent of growing more
wonderful with every passing day. She is not static or stuck; she does not rest
on her laurels or grow complacent. She’s always thinking of new things and
figuring out the conundrums of the human condition and wading into the thorny
reaches of the psyche. She always has a new theory for us to ponder, or has
refined an old one and given it a little lemon twist. She is a remarkable
human, and she is my friend.

Thursday, 28 April 2016

This week the weather
blew in again from the Arctic and spring was vanquished. There was some sun,
but there was snow too, horrid bitter blizzards, messy and bleak. The wind
howled down from the north, mocking my puny plan. I felt furious and defeated,
stumping through the mud to tend to the mares, crossly racking up my daily word
count, so grumpy that I refused even to write the blog. You all have weather,
literal and metaphorical; I was not going to add to it.

Then, today,
something wonderful happened. Within a single hour, I whooped, I wept, and I
laughed for sheer happiness. All human emotion was there. I was alive again.

It is quite
rare that the weather defeats me, and of course it was not just the weather. I
am a countrywoman, and I have an array of absurd hats. I have spent the last
four months covered in mud, cracking the ice on the water trough, leading the
horses through once-in-a-century floods. I believe in stoicism and buggering
on.

The weather
defeated me I think because I was faking it, a bit. I had got myself lost in
the maze of false expectation. I was expecting spring, and for a moment it
glimmered with promise, and then it was snatched away. At the same time, it was six months since
my mother died, and I had been getting glimpses of normality. I could go in and
make the dear Stepfather his breakfast and cheer him up without having to put
on a false front. I could make normal conversation and laugh in an unforced
way. I could, once more, see the beauty without squinting for it. I was
expecting that this new normal meant the storm was over.

When the
literal storms came back, a metaphorical storm returned. Things are going, from
the house my mother and stepfather shared. Each day this week, I would go in,
and there would be another blank space on the wall. The chair that she sat in,
which always had on its arm a delicate Kashmiri shawl I had given her, had been
shipped off to auction. There was just an empty space where it had been, with
only four melancholy dimples in the carpet to mark its place.

I wanted to
cry, but I was not going to cry, because of the new normal, because of the
stoicism, because of the expectations. It was six months on and I had work to
do and I don’t want to be one of those people who are always leaking like a
watering pot. On I stumped, furious at the weather, averting my eyes from those
empty spaces.

The sun came
out this morning and something was released. It started with the red mare. She
let all her thoroughbred glory shine in the light. We cantered round in a vast
circle, mapping the set-aside, gathering power and speed, rolling in harmony.
Her Aston Martin engine purred beneath me. She was on a loose rein, entirely in
command of herself, all poise and elegance, but I let her go on a little, and
we picked up speed, and that was when I felt the power and the glory. That was
when I whooped out loud into the bright air.

Then I went
to cook the breakfast. The dear Stepfather had a little collection of things
out on the table. ‘The moving men found this,’ he said, pointing. ‘When they
took away the chest of drawers.’ I thought we had done all the stuff. (They are
only things I kept telling myself,
but some things are more precious and meaningful than others.) I looked, and
looked again.

‘Oh,’ I
said, my voice coming out in a dying fall. ‘I know that box.’

It was a
small, leather, dun-coloured jewellery box with my great-grandfather’s initials
on it in faded gold. I did know that box. When I was twelve, I used to open that
box every Saturday in the winter and sometimes on Wednesdays too. I opened it
now, hardly able to believe that it would still have the thing I remembered in
it.

But there it
was. It was my mother’s stock pin, a simple, elegant item in low gold, with the
familiar dull gleam of use on it. ‘I used to wear this,’ I said to the dear
Stepfather. ‘On my pony, Seamus.’ Seamus was the forerunner, the first great
love of my life, the one that paved the way for the red mare.

And that was
when I burst into tears in the middle of the kitchen.

The dear
Stepfather bore it very well. I mopped my eyes and made a joke and we talked of
other things. I think that perhaps he quite likes the odd bit of weeping,
despite the fact he is a stiff upper lip sort of gentleman, because there it is
– a living proof that someone else misses her too.

I cried
because six months means nothing, because the new normal comes and goes like
radio static and is as impermanent, because stoicism only gets you so far. I
cried because this person I loved somehow managed to hold on to that precious
object, in its little box, through moves from one side of the world to the
other, through a catastrophic fire which took almost all our belongings, through
divorce and despair. I loved that pin and I wore that pin on some of the
happiest days of my life. And there it was, nearly forty years later, like a dear, shining miracle.

The chair is
gone, but the pin is still there.

And then I
ate my eggs and drove up to HorseBack and watched some veterans ride their good
horses with joy and determination and it was such a happy sight that I
exclaimed in delight and shouted ‘Well done, good work, look at you all,’ and took my pictures and came home and wrote 1399
words of secret project and felt like a human being again.

The mare
started it. She nearly always does. She has the gift of giving me back to
myself. Yesterday, I stood with her in the field, in that bitter, whipping
wind, her head on my shoulder, and I said to her: ‘You got me through this, you
know.’ She is a horse. She does not know. But perhaps, in some tiny, mysterious
part of her, she does know, just a little.

Everyone needs something, someone to
get them Through This. It does not matter if it is a human or a place or a
passion or a tree. It can be a belief or a view or a dog. Everyone needs
something. I got a horse. I got a horse of such beauty and grace and shining
authenticity that she lifts me up and gently sets me back on my feet again. I
don’t know how she does it, but she does.

Friday, 22 April 2016

A most
enchanted morning. The sun shone and the high clouds sailed across the sky and one
of my very favourite members of the extended family came to help me with the
horses. I wanted to get my little brown mare out for a nice walk, to start
getting her back to herself after her horrid operation. We took her and the red
mare out in hand, through the marvellous trees, along the burn, past the sheep,
by the blue hill, back down the shady drive to the field. The mares pricked
their ears and had a swing in their step; the humans talked and talked and
talked and laughed and laughed and laughed. There was a huge amount of
sweetness. It was a glorious way to start a day.

I think a
lot about gratitude. Although I sometimes get a bit scratchy and grumpy with
those blissed-out Zenny types who bang on about gratitude lists and Welcoming
the Abundance, I do know they are right. Gratitude for all the small, lovely
things that are sometimes taken for granted is very important, I believe. As we walked, my beloved relation and I said to each other, in slight wonder: ‘Aren’t we lucky?’ We
looked at the trees and the hills and the sky and the lambs and the beautiful
mares, walking sweetly behind us, and felt that amazing luck.

Not everyone
wants this. A lot of people love the hurly and burly of urban life, need the
shot of worldly sophistication that cities bring, thrive on the crowds and the
culture and the antic street drama. We are two old countrywomen, brought up
with horses and livestock and earth and weather. To us, the trees and the hills
and bright air are as majestic as a cathedral.

I was still
smiling when I went to HorseBack, and there I smiled some more, as I watched a
group of young people rise to a whole set of challenges with enthusiasm and
grace. They were inspiring, and I was inspired. I went home and did a whole lot
of HorseBack work, whilst sneaking a peak at the charming Perth festival, one
of my favourite race meetings of the year. My veteran friend, who was at the
course, sent me increasingly jubilant messages as he backed every winner on the
card.

Then I wrote
some of my secret project. I have written many hundreds of words this week, and
I suddenly look up and realise, rather to my surprise, that I have a
book-length manuscript on my hands. I don’t quite know how that happened. I sat
down and put my cussed hat on and gritted my teeth and said fuck ‘em if they
can’t take a joke and took a risk. It’s the most speculative of secret
projects, and it could be a blinder or it could crash and burn. But I am in the
home straight now, and I feel a little glow of pleasure and pride and rank astonishment. (All those words; where did they come from?)

Even more to
my surprise, I realise it has been a good week. It was good not because I was
straining every sinew to make it good. The stars aligned. I worked hard and I
felt the sun on my back and I laughed at the dogs as they played in the long
meadow and I greeted the new lambs and I wished the Queen a happy birthday in the privacy of my own head and
I smiled as the reluctant daffodils finally came out. The red mare was at her
most mighty crest and peak of sheer, raging loveliness. The little brown mare is
healing, and her sweet spark is returning. I spoke at length to the Beloved
Cousin, which always makes any week better, and discussed Europe with the dear
Stepfather. I read a fascinating book about the Second World War and watched
some old episodes of the West Wing, my standing treat.

I am
learning to live without my mother. I miss her all the time, but that missing
no longer tears my heart from my chest. I remembered my glorious dad, who died
five years ago yesterday. I remembered him with love and pride and pleasure
instead of the haunting shades of melancholy. I miss him too. I wish they were both still here, but I
have them safe in my heart. They go with me now.

So, what
with one thing and another, a good week is not something I can take for
granted. It feels like a bit of a present, as if someone wrapped up something
charming in a brown paper parcel and sent it by the post so that Pearl the
Postwoman would have to knock on my door and get my signature. A good week is
quite something.

Wednesday, 20 April 2016

The sun shines this morning, and I look at
pictures of the Queen in the paper. She looks very elegant and calm, like a majestic
ocean liner. Gor bless her, and all who sail in her. In a way, she is the
British ship of state, and she does sail serenely on through turbulent seas.

I shall never meet the Queen, I
think, a little regretful. Lots of people do meet her. They meet her at flower
shows and Lord Mayor’s banquets and garden parties and I don’t know what. They
meet her when she opens a hospital or inspects the troops. They shake her hand
and they don’t forget it.

I did see her once, in a room. I was
just arriving and she was just leaving. There was a murmur and a rustle of
evening dresses as the women curtseyed while she moved past. I flattened myself
against a friendly wall and stared. She has an incandescence which does not show
in photographs, as if she is lit by some inner light. Also: she glides. A flash of diamonds, a beam of
that famous smile, another murmur, another rustle, and she was gone.

At this stage, those who believe in
a republic will be chewing their arms off. This week must be agony for them.
Our own dear Queen is about to be ninety, and all those who admire her will be
getting misty-eyed. This outpouring of affection drives the anti-monarchists
bonkers.

I used to be one of those old bolshies. I thought it
perfectly absurd that a mere twist of birth led to someone ruling a kingdom and
wearing a crown. It made no sense, not in this modern age.

As I have grown older, I see that it
is one of those things that is indeed absurd, but also, oddly, works. (I love
things that work.) The doughty traditionalists' argument of continuity and
steadiness has some validity. But really, it is not a question of a rational
argument, of who is right or wrong. It’s a question of love.

What the most strident Queen-bashers
don’t understand is that they are at risk of sounding like crashing snobs. The crossest
republicans are mostly metropolitan chattering classes. I used to be one of
them, with my urban, bien pensant, liberal bleeding heart, so I know what I’m
talking about. When they sneer at the Queen and at the monarchy and at the
whole royal family, they think they are being tremendous femmes and hommes du peuple.
They seem to believe sincerely that they are speaking up for the man on the
Clapham omnibus, the woman in the street. They are taking a stand against those
ghastly posh people, with their green acres and their huntin’, shootin’, fishin’,
their stately piles and their family jewels. They are fighting for the Ordinary
Decent Britons, who shall never wear a tiara or sit on a throne.

In fact, the irony is that it is
those very Ordinary Decent Britons who love the Queen the most. It is not posh
people who adore the Queen. The posh people say things like: ‘Oh, the Queen. Don’t
know how she does it. Marvellous.’ And then they go back to contemplating
something much more important, like Labradors or the 3.30 at Sandown. They are
not the ones who line the Mall on state occasions to watch the carriages go by,
or buy commemorative plates, or queue up to look round Buckingham Palace and
Windsor Castle. They don’t wave Union flags joyfully below that famous balcony
or wait outside Crathie Church to see the royal party emerge or send off for
special coins from the Mint. No, the people who do that are the very people
that the furious anti-Queenies insist they are speaking for.

Ah, say the republicans, clearing
their throats; well, you see, false
consciousness. I am relieved to admit that even at the height of my own
chattering class, bleeding heart pomp, I never uttered those words. They are so
bloody patronising that they make me want to punch someone in the nose. Here, little
people, you think you love the Queen,
but you don’t really, because she is the one who is Keeping You In Your Place. Every
time you wave your stupid flag, you are instrumental in your own oppression.
We, however, we clever, right-thinking republicans know what is good for you
better than you know it yourselves.

Can you imagine anything more
snobbish than that? It puts the most patriarchal old Tory in the shade.

I do love the Queen. I love her
steadiness and her sense of duty and her thriftiness and her passion for horses.
I love that she knows the stud book back to front, and can confound the most
storied breeders of racehorses with her encyclopaedic knowledge. I love that
she understands, better than anyone, the glory and might of the thoroughbred. I
love that she wears sensible shoes.

It may not be cool or hip or fashionable
to love the Queen. How the sneerers would curl their lip if they could see me
stand to attention when the National Anthem is played as I watch the racing at
the Royal Meeting. I don’t care. I am an ordinary Briton, and I wave my little
flag.

Tuesday, 19 April 2016

The sun
shone. All the daffodils are out now and the tiny new-born lambs are skipping
in the fields, watched over by their serious mamas, and it feels as if spring
is coming. The kind gentleman who has always tended my mother’s garden and who
tends it still, as if in memory of her, looks up at the sky and says: ‘But they
say another late snow is coming.’ This morning, snow feels far away.

The dogs
splash in the burn; the little brown mare does polo turns and rodeo tricks by
herself in her paddock; the red mare does a dreamy dressage canter with me on
her back. Yesterday, I wrote 2951 words of secret project; today, there were
another 1904. I am bash, bash, bashing away.

I spent
yesterday among quite another kind of book. The dear Stepfather has been
collecting books for thirty-five years. He once worked in the book trade, and
he is a connoisseur of the first edition. He has first editions of Osbert
Sitwell and Anthony Powell and other fine 20th century writers, but
his great collection is of Evelyn Waugh. The funny thing is that Evelyn Waugh
is one of the people who made me want to be a writer. I read Vile Bodies when I
was sixteen, and I wanted to write a book exactly like that. Thirty-three years
later, I stand in a sun-lit room, looking at a pristine first edition of that
novel.

The collection is moving on now. It
is going to be sold. The beautiful books, with their inscriptions in Waugh’s
hand, and their book plates, and their provenance, will go on to delight other
humans.

It’s a bittersweet moment. I’ve
loved those books. Quite often, I make the dear Stepfather take one down from
the shelf and tell me about it. I heft the lovely object in my hand and think
of its history and admire its design. I was so used to going into the house and
casting my happy eyes over that cabinet of delights.

Yesterday was our last day with
them. We played with them like children, got them out and turned the leaves and
exclaimed over them. ‘Tell me about this one again,’ I said. ‘And oh, look, this one.’

This morning, they are gone, on
their long journey south. A nice young man with a beard came and packed them up
and drove them away. There is a space in the cabinet, where all the glory used
to sit.

They were only objects, after all.
It is right that they go out into the world to give pleasure to others. But I
shall miss them very much. It was a rare privilege to know them.

Wednesday, 13 April 2016

There are good
days and bad days and perfectly fine days and surprising days and day that I
wish were over. And then there are the missing days. Today was a missing day.

I had to
clear out some things of my mother’s. We’ve done most of the big stuff. These
were small unimportant things in small unimportant drawers. I had promised my
stepfather I would do it before he came home, and I’d been putting it off.

The little
things made me laugh and broke my heart. In one small drawer I found a fairly
peculiar implement, something between a brush and a comb, which I could not
identify. I squinted at it. It had writing on it. It was a hairbrush brush. My
mother had a brush for her hairbrush.
She must have been so delighted on the day she discovered that. Perhaps she
found it in one of the catalogues she liked. Ah, she would have said, at last
someone has invented something really useful. Now, she would have said, I can
keep those hairbrushes in spit-spot order.

There were a
few sweet necklaces which I think must have been given to her by the
grandchildren and the great-grandchildren. There were some empty jewellery boxes.
What was in the Cartier box, I wondered? It was old and shabby, probably from
the fifties, but she had kept the empty box all these years. Perhaps my father
got her a lovely jewel after a big win at Cheltenham. Perhaps the jewel went
west, but the box stayed to remind her.

In the
bottom drawer there were lavender bags and an elegant voile envelope with seven
immaculate cambric handkerchiefs folded inside. The handkerchiefs almost
finished me off. Does anyone even buy handkerchiefs any more, in this age of
the disposable Kleenex? Well, my dear mother did.

Most of the
time, I understand well that my mother is not here any more. I am growing used
to that hard fact. One of the most important stages of grief is acceptance, and
I work diligently at that one. There is no point in crying for the moon. Life
is life, and facts are facts, and this is what happens to every human. Every
human will miss another human. Every heart will break. I get good and stoical
about that.

And then
there are moments when I damn well do cry for the moon. I want her back so much
I can’t stand up. I want one more joke, one more conversation, one more word of
wisdom. The chair where she used to sit is so empty, so haunting, so doleful.
The house is so lost without her. I am lost without her. She was my mum, and I
miss her.

I take a
breath, and gather up all the little things that would mean nothing to anyone
else but which mean the world to me. I take the seven handkerchiefs. I gather
myself, because one must always gather oneself. I go to my desk and shake my
head and write 2880 words. The words are not flying free today, but have to be
quarried from surly stone. Yet there they are, after hours of effort.

I let my
shoulders come down and turn philosophical. This is life; this is how the
missing is. Some days it is hardly there at all. Some days it knocks you to the
ground. Some days I am lost; some days I am found. That is how it goes.

Monday, 11 April 2016

Not long ago
or far away, there was an Irish man who was very good at his job. He had a son
who played the drums and cooked glorious food and had an adventurous spirit,
according to all those who knew and loved him. And his son died. The Irish man
must have wondered, as everyone who is faced with sudden, tearing tragedies
wonders, whether being good at his job was enough any more. Perhaps he wondered
what the point of it all was. I think I would have.

On Saturday, that man trained the
winner of the Grand National.

Perhaps there was a point, after
all.

Mouse Morris
is a bit of a legend in racing. He doesn’t really go by the book. He doesn’t
wear a smart Trilby like Willie Mullins and he famously smokes about forty fags
a day and he’s always got a little glimmer of mischief in his eyes. He is known
for his uncanny ability to get a horse right for the big day. And he did that
on Saturday in spades.

The extraordinary thing is that he
has not just suffered a crushing blow in the last year, with the loss of his
beloved boy, but that Rule the World, the horse who stormed round the elbow as
if Aintree was his spiritual home, has never won a steeplechase in his life. He’s
been plagued with injury, he’s never run over anything like four and a quarter miles, he’s never set foot
on the Aintree turf. I did all my homework, and I had to put a big cross next
to his name. In the Racing Post, they do a thing where they put all the Grand
National markers against each horse, and then do a tick or a cross. Distance,
course form, all that kind of thing. Many Clouds, who did not run his race
after all, had a tick in every single box. Rule the World had one.

He was ridden by a nineteen year old
jockey called David Mullins, who had never seen the Grand National fences until
he walked the course on Saturday morning. That’s another thing you look for,
when you have your beady punting hat on – a jockey who knows these fences, who
knows the elephant traps, who can plot a course and keep his or her horse out
of trouble. This young man had not so much as clapped eyes on Aintree.

Everything on paper was wrong.
Everything on the day came gloriously, wildly, madly right. The horse hunted
round as if Aintree was everything he was waiting for, the young jockey rode a
peach, the wily old trainer’s faith was rewarded. Even Michael O’Leary went
from flinty businessman to emotional human when he wept on national television.

Mouse Morris could not speak, he was
so overwhelmed. He managed to say, to Clare Balding: ‘I’ve got to give up the
fags.’ Which is surely the best ever reaction to winning the world’s most
famous race. A little later he said, of his son: ‘He was looking down on us.’

Rule the World won the Grand
National at 33-1 and I did not have a penny on him and I was as happy as if I
had hit the jackpot. That’s what this race is all about: the unlikely story,
the heart-warming moment, the authentic emotion.

And the best result of all was that
for the fourth year running, all the gallant equines went safely home to their
yards.

Now it’s an ordinary week again, and
I have work to do and I must put on my Captain Sensible hat and crack on.

Saturday, 9 April 2016

My
friend in the shop who keeps the Racing Post for me each Saturday is a great
betting man. This morning, I run into him as I go to pick up my paper and we
fall with delight to discussing the wonders of Many Clouds, the each-way
chances of Goonyella, the staying prospects of Silviniaco Conti, and whether
Black Thunder might give Sam Waley-Cohen a nice spin round. ‘He hasn’t quite
got the form in the book,’ I say. ‘But I’ve got a sort of feeling. Sam
Waley-Cohen has the best record over the Aintree fences of any jockey riding.’

My friend gives me one of his glimmering sidelong looks. ‘It’s the Grand
National,’ he says. ‘Anything could happen.’

I
am so excited that I point out Many Clouds, whose picture adorns the front page
of the Racing Post, to the ladies at the till and try to explain the true glory
of him, what a brave, honest horse he is, and how his trainer was an old friend
of my late father. ‘It almost feels like family,’ I say, in a burst of
exuberance.

One
of the ladies, who is also my friend, smiles in appreciation. But the other
one, whom I don’t really know because she is usually in the back office running the show, looks at me coldly and says: ‘I think it is cruel. That
racing over fences.’ She makes an expression of ultimate disgust.

That
is one big bucket of cold water. I look at her, uncertain. ‘Well,’ I say,
rather quietly. ‘I grew up in it, you see. I saw how happy the horses were. It
was my father’s life’s work.’

I
felt very sad for quite a long time after this. I had been so happy when I got
up, as excited as a child on Christmas morning. Now I plodded home in the dour
Scottish rain, demoralised and deflated.

It’s
just one person, I thought. The Grand National always makes some people cross.
Everyone must have their opinion. Because if there is one thing I believe in as
much as I believe in the gallant heart of Many Clouds, the bone-deep
horsemanship of Leighton Aspell, the enduring talent and honourable spirit of
Oliver Sherwood, it is freedom of expression. Everyone must think and say what
they will.

But
I could not shrug it off. I tried to make the argument in my head. I’ve done
this many times, because every time I see a horse get injured in a race I turn
away in sorrow and despair, and I have to talk myself down off the ceiling.

Horses
can injure themselves, sometimes fatally, in the field, on a quiet road, even in
their stables, if they get cast. A sudden colic, a ruthless infection, a brutal
grass sickness can finish them off. I’ve spent the last three weeks bracing myself
for the possibility that my own little bay mare could die, even though she was
in the hands of the best vet and the best surgeon in Scotland, and although she
is now on the mend she is not quite out of the woods.

Nobody
sees those injuries and deaths on television, and so nobody makes a fuss about
them. But they still exist. I think of all the horses who endure a living
death, the riding school ponies booted about by people with no feeling for the
sensitive equine mind, the sad livery cases who sit in the stables bored
witless until their owner comes to visit once a week. I think: if I were a
horse, I would like to be one of those racing athletes, fit as twenty-seven
fiddles, fed and groomed and exercised to perfection, flying over the Lambourn
downs on those dazzling mornings I remember so well from my childhood, with the
larks on the wing and the scent of freedom in the air.

I
think: no human can make a half-ton flight animal do anything it does not want
to do. The dear old Mad Moose, who became beloved for his ornery character and
most determined ideas, told his humans very clearly that he no
longer liked racing when he took to refusing to start. He was actually rather
good at running at speed over jumps, but one day, just like that, he had had
enough. The humans tried this and tried that and eventually believed that he
meant what he said. Now he does dressage, and he is as happy as a bug. He was
not being silly or naughty, he was merely expressing his own opinion, and luckily
he had people who listened to him.

But
all this is the rational side of it. It could not lift my bashed spirits. I
still felt sad and crushed. I suddenly realised what it was. The childish,
emotional, irrational part of me says, when the antis come out: you are calling
my father a monster. You are calling all those grand racing titans from my
childhood years – J Lawrence, Fred Winter, Fulke Walwyn, Dave Dick, Eddy Harty –
those giants of the game I remember as lovely, funny, kind gentlemen, on whose
knees I sat before I even knew what a Grand National was, let alone that some
of them had won it, sadists and brutes. And that breaks my heart.

I
know that is not precisely what is happening, but that is what it feels like.

My
father’s horses were happy horses. I
wonder how many people who shout about cruelty have ever been to a National
Hunt yard. I wonder whether they have gone into a box before dawn and woken one
of those sleeping athletes, heard the low whicker of greeting, seen the soft,
wise, liquid eye, stroked the majestic neck. I wonder whether they have watched
them mosey out for first lot, swinging down the lane on the buckle, pricking
their ears as they turn up to the gallops. I wonder whether they have gone down
to the yard in the quiet time before evening stables, and seen the beautiful
thoroughbreds dozing in the afternoon sun, at ease with themselves and the
world. I wonder whether they have witnessed the care and thought and love that
goes into these equine lives.

I
was going to write a joyful, absurd, dancing blog today, about my adoration for
Many Clouds, about my memories of going to the great race with my father, when
we used to run into the Irish at the Adelphi and have a party and then go out
on the course at seven-thirty the next day to see the horses stretch their legs,
when it seemed that half the racing world was gathered in the morning mist and
everyone had a tot of brandy in their coffee as a little heart-starter. (I don’t
think they do that any more. I’m perfectly certain that Willie Mullins does not
break out the cognac before breakfast. He is far too busy piling up Grade Ones and wearing his special hat)

It
turns out that this is a different kind of writing, much more bitter-sweet. I
feel the loss of my parents very much on big race days, and the unexpected cross
word in the shop hit that enduring bruise and left its mark. But then all sweet
has a little bitter in it. That, says the resigned, been-round-the-block voice
in my head, is life.

Friday, 8 April 2016

Annie
Power won, cantering round in a Group One like a composed dressage horse, and
the love burst out of my heart like an exploding rocket. She has grown very
regal, with all the composure and aplomb and grace of an empress, and she
kindly surveys her subjects and allows them to pay homage to her, as is her
right.

All horses have their characters,
and all are as unique as snowflakes, but the great ones get this imperial
aspect as they grow in stature. It is what my mother used to call the look of
eagles. She always said that Arkle had it, and later Kauto Star and Frankel. Annie
has it now. Something has shifted in her. She was always very good, but now she
floats above the herd, on a higher plane. She is soaring into the realms of the
unforgettable. I think people will tell their grandchildren that they were
there when Annie Power won the Champion Hurdle, or sauntered to victory at
Aintree. She is stamping herself into the collective memory, and there is something
profoundly moving in that.

I think about why I watch all these
races and watch all these horses and rush to finish my work each morning in a
frenzy so I can spend the afternoon with these flying thoroughbreds, who feel
like friends to me.

I think it is an almost unique
combination of the aesthetic and the visceral. Almost all of these racing
horses are astonishingly beautiful. They have their different shades of beauty.
Annie Power is well named. She is not a pretty mare. She is all power and
muscle and granite strength. Her stable-mate, Vroum Vroum Mag, has a gentle
sweetness to her, and much more defined features, and is known at home for her
kind nature and her willingness to do anything that is asked of her. Cue Card,
who also brought the house down yesterday, and especially this house, has a
bright, flashy, fine handsomeness, and an antic, dancing disposition. Vautour,
who runs today, has something charmingly old-fashioned about him, and would not
look out of place in a Stubbs hunting scene.

They are also beautiful in action, stretching
their carved legs in a searching gallop, rising in a perfect arc over the stiff
birch, gathering themselves for the final effort.

And then there is the visceral
aspect, the heart and guts and glory. There is the pure joy of watching fierce
athletes do what they were bred to do, at top speed, at the edge of their
capabilities. There are the ones who really want it, who fight like tigers, who
dig deep, generously offering every last inch of themselves without question.
That calls to some ancient instinct in me, the one that loves courage and
spirit and devil may care. That is the part which throws caution to the winds
and says what the hell, that does not stop to be sensible or contained or
respectable.

I rode my own little Annie Power
this morning. I did the thing which is now becoming traditional when Annie
struts her stuff on a racecourse. I threw the reins at the red mare, stood up
in the stirrups, and shouted: ‘Come on, Annie’. I let her roll under me, seeing
the woods ahead through her pricked chestnut ears, trying to imagine what Ruby
Walsh must see when he jumps the last on that mighty mare and sees only empty
green racecourse in front of him, and the winning post beckoning like a gleaming
beacon.

We will never win anything. She
could not see the point of racing at all, and trundled round merrily at the
back, blithely oblivious to the disgrace she was bringing on her illustrious
bloodlines. (I find this very funny, but her poor breeder must have wanted to
cry.) I was never brave enough to tread in the footsteps of my father and ride
over fences. But all the same, out in that quiet Scottish field, with all that
thoroughbred power under me rolling happily along on a loose rein, I feel the
glory and hear the shouts of the crowd and know that, for us, every post is a
winning post.

Thursday, 7 April 2016

Some
days, the words fly out of the ends of my fingers as if someone has sent them
by post. I quite often wonder where the words come from. When they are flowing
easily, I feel that I can take no credit for them. They appear and I transcribe
them and that is all.

Of course my rational self knows
that the words arrive because I have been thinking and pondering and
cogitating, so that by the time I sit down to the physical act of typing all
those thoughts are queuing up to go into language.

The irrational self says: bloody
hell, where did that come from?

Lately, I’ve been on a roll. Even on
the grumpy days, those dear words were there, available to me, ready to rumble.
I’ve been racking up massive counts, and even though I know it is not about the
numbers, and quantity does not always trot along with quality, there was a
humming satisfaction in that.

Today, I sat down and had to dig the
damn words out with a spoon. I did not really know what I wanted to say. I
could not find the correct adjective, and I love a correct adjective. The prose
had no flight in it, but was dourly and resolutely earthbound.

So I did, because I can’t write only
when I have inspiration in me. The whole point of being a professional, if I
can use that word without falling down laughing, is that I write on the bad
days and the low days and the stupid days. I can’t just wait for the magic to
happen. I have to bash on when there is no stardust.

I think this is a bit of a lesson
for life. I’m a huge believer in bashing on, even when I would much rather give
up and hide behind the sofa.

Down in the field, new birds are
arriving all the time, the living embodiment of spring. I am not a twitcher,
and I can hardly tell my great tit from my warbler, but I love the birds even
if I don’t know what their names are. ‘Hello, hello’ I say out loud, to the
happy visitors, as if I were an ambassadress at a diplomatic reception. The person who pitched up today, looking very
fine, was, it turned out, a female chaffinch. (I looked her up on the RSPB bird
identifier.) She was so splendid that I was slightly disconcerted to find that
she is ‘the second commonest breeding bird’. I felt rather cross on her behalf.
There was nothing common about her. As I watched her perch on the fence and
flash her tail I thought she looked entirely remarkable and not at all
ordinary.

The mares are happy, covered in mud,
still holding on to their winter coats just in case, still looking more like
Exmoor ponies than descendents of Northern Dancer. I did some made-up dressage
with my red mare today, and she was majestic. ‘Those transitions,’ I exclaimed. She nodded her wise head. She knows all
about transitions.

And today is Annie Power day, as my
favourite racing mare comes to Aintree fresh from her triumphant romp in the
Champion Hurdle. Any day that is Annie Power day is like Christmas morning for
me.

So there were many good things. But there
were no good words. I bished and boshed and bullied them out, and they fell
flat and sullen onto the page.

Better tomorrow, I told myself, a
little rueful and chastened. Tomorrow, the words will wake up and sing.

Wednesday, 6 April 2016

After my
moment of happiness amidst the dung, of course I had The Crash. This happens so
often that I don’t know why I do not see it coming. I get caught in a category
error. I think that one shining moment of joy means that I am now set on the
path to joy, instead of understanding it as a thing complete in itself.

I was in such a filthy mood for the
last two days that I could not even write this blog, because I did not want to
burden you with scratchiness and crossness and fury. Despite myself, I want to
give you the good bits. So much rain falls into every life that I do not want
to add to the deluge. Here, I want to say, here is your little ray of sunshine.

In the end, as the small slights and
wounds and lacerations piled up, I found myself on the back on my red mare, in
the middle of a dull Scottish field, the sky over my head the colour of dashed
dreams, weeping like a child.

After that, it was better. Little
things had piled up, and I was so invested in this idea that I could be happy
now I had had my revelatory moment, that I ignored them. Every morning, when I
go into the house my mother and stepfather shared, where we spent so many happy times together, and find it empty, it is a little bruise on my heart. Even
though my mother was confined to her bed for the last months of her life, she
still made that house beautiful. Her life spread through it. She had two kind
ladies who came in to do the work she could no longer do herself, and I had not
realised how much she must have spoken to them and encouraged them to arrange
everything in just the way she liked. She was like a set designer, making the
stage come to life.

Now that house feels forlorn, the
life going out of it day by day, as my stepfather is away on a family trip. I
was trying to be matter of fact about that, and refused to acknowledge how much
it wore on my spirit. Don’t make a fuss, said my old school voices; be stoical,
carry on. Then the brown mare had a wound that would not heal and no matter
what I did it still looked hideous and sore and I suddenly thought that despite
her having come through her operation, she would die of blood poisoning. People
were cross with me, for three different things that were All My Fault. There are few more demoralising things than people getting cross with you when you know you are in the
wrong. (The horrid part of me always wants to be in the right, so the doing of
the wrong things and the severe tone of voice people use when they point this
out are excruciatingly humiliating to me.)

All this built up until I felt
defeated. So I sat on the horse and cried.

And today the sun came out and I wrote 2624 words of my secret project and I remembered about the most important dance of modern life, which is the One Step
Forwards, Two Steps Back Shuffle. I do this dance all the time. I should know
the steps by now. Ah, said my kind, adult, sane mind, which had not been able
to get a word in edgeways for forty-eight hours, it’s not the end of
everything; it’s just that dear old dance.

A line from an old song came into my
head. ‘Dance, dance, dance, little lady, leave tomorrow behind.’ I am not a little
lady, but I damn well can dance.

Friday, 1 April 2016

Today, I was
happy. Properly, purely, authentically happy. Right down to my boots.

It did not
last all day. It was a long moment, in a specific place, but it was real and
true.

I had not felt like this since my mother died. I have climbed back up
onto the rocky shore from the sea of grief. I began to have flashes of
normality, could laugh proper shouty belly laughs, could enjoy simple
pleasures. I started to lose the feeling that I was hanging on my fingertips,
or being the spectre at the feast, or having to conceal my true feelings so
that I did not frighten the metaphorical and actual horses.

I started singing again. This is always a good sign, although
it is perhaps not so welcome for the poor mares, who have to put up with me
warbling out of tune as I give them their hay. I brushed my hair and even
occasionally put on my lipstick. Colour came back into my cheeks. I got work
done. I did not want to burst into tears three times a day.

But all the same, there was the low
drum-beat of loss. The pleasures were fleeting and near the surface. Sometimes
I felt I was forcing myself to feel them, just a little, almost as an act of
defiance. This life, this loss, this blow would not get me down, would not finish me off, would not wreck
everything.

The happiness today was organic, and
came up from the earth, and spread through me, at first so unfamiliar that I
did not know what it was. It was like running into a very old friend you have
not seen for years and having to do a quick double-take before you recognise
them. Oh yes, I said, it really is
you.

And where did it happen, this
revelation? What was I doing? Was I gazing at my beloved hills, or up in the
mountains, or listening to Bach? Was I contemplating a sea cruise or an African
safari? Had the agent just rung up and told me she had sold the book in eight
territories?

No.

I was standing in the rain,
shovelling shit.

This is making me laugh so much I
can hardly type.

The sky was the colour of despairing
pigeons, a bitter east wind was blowing, and I had on my maddest hat, the one I
bought from the village shop for seven quid, to keep the rain off. The horses,
muddy and rugged up, were eating their hay and giving me little quizzical looks
out of the corner of their eyes, because I was belting out an old Cat Stevens
number. The piles of dung seemed to accumulate around me, and no matter how
many I cleared, I would find another secret cache. (I sometimes think the mares
do it for a joke.)

Here, amidst the dung, I was happy.

The universe looked down on me and
laughed its most ironical laugh.

The funny thing is that only this
morning I thought: I must give the Dear Readers some fine prose. My life is
really not that riveting. It involves canines and equines and green soup and
going to the Co-op and endless word counts. Sometimes the most fascinating
thing that happens is a shocking revelation on The Archers. Recording it is
interesting to me, because I like to look back and see what I did, but it’s
pretty pedestrian for everyone else. The whole point about me is that I am a writer, so I should make the attempt to
do something interesting with language. The poor Dear Readers put up with so
much. They deserve a break. I shall give them some ravishing paragraphs, I
thought.

This was my grand resolution. And
then I go and write about shovelling shit.

PS. It was too dreary today for pictures. The photograph is from a sunnier moment. A Dear Reader was asking about the beech avenue, and so here it is.

LinkWithin

The Happy Horse

Click on the link to find this on Amazon

Seventy-Seven Ways to Make Your Life Slightly Better

Click on the picture to find this on Amazon

HORSEBACK UK

HorseBack UK is a charity for returning servicemen and women which I support. It features regularly on the blog, so if you want to find out more about it, just click on HorseBack UK in the Labels section below.